The former Cleveland head coach considers Miami players to be heroes of the season, as well as nostalgic for his work in the Russian national team.
David Blatt is a cult coach for Russian basketball. His name is associated with the main victories of the generation of Andrei Kirilenko and Viktor Khryapa – gold Eurobasket-2007 and bronze of the 2012 Olympic Games (there was still a third place at the European Championships 2011). In addition to the high results and family atmosphere in the team, it was Blatt who began to organize training camps for potential players of the national team and tried to find diamonds among little-known basketball players. At one of these training camps, the coach opened Semyon Antonov, who was playing in Super League 2.
After our national team, Blatt had brightwork at Maccabi, returning the Israeli club to the status of the best team in Europe in the 2013/14 season, 1.5 years coached “Cleveland” led by LeBron James and took the European Cup with the Turkish “Darushafaka”. In 2019, Blatt ended his coaching career due to a serious illness, but does not lose heart and continues to work himself.
In an interview with “SE”, David told about his impressions of the results of the season in the NBA, the problems of the Euroleague and once again reminded why he is so loved in Russia.
And what doubts could there be if they took the title, confidently winning all their series in the playoffs, but I would first of all like to say compliments to Miami. They generally showed a terrific game in Orlando. Including in the final series, when they were left without the injured Adebayo and Dragic. Even in this situation, they continued to struggle, showed the character of the winners, won two games against the Lakers and had chances to make the score in the series equal. Again, there are no questions about the Lakers’ championship – but the Players and Coaches of the Heat are also heroes of this difficult season.
What do you think about the actions of LeBron James and Anthony Davis? Can we say that this is one of the strongest ligaments in the history of the NBA?
– I am usually asked, is LeBron the best player in NBA history? In my opinion, one basketball player can’t be called the best. In each decade there was a superhero and to compare them, at least, is not serious. I think in the ’60s it was Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, in the ’70s it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the 80s were Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and in the ’90s was Michael Jordan. The best player of 20 years of the 21st century is LeBron. There are people who think otherwise and even make interesting arguments against James, but this is an obvious fact.
If we talk about their connection with Davis, they understand each other perfectly. If you take their first year of playing together, it turned out to be perfect. The guys complemented each other perfectly, did not be greedy, both sacrificed their personal statistics for the sake of the team. As it goes on, we’ll see. Now it’s the best brunch in the NBA.
I’ll say a trivial thing. Basketball is a team sport and the success of an organization cannot depend on one or two people. It’s always a collaborative effort. Miami is a coaching team. The guys trust Spoelstra very well, defend very well, show team basketball in the classic sense of the word. There’s almost no such thing in the NBA right now. Well, The merit of Riley is that the players and coaching staff can fully concentrate on the game, with no distractions. All the processes work amazingly at Heath.